Of all furniture needs, the chair may be the most important. While the majority of other objects (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs such as a bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it historically is an indicator of social place. Within the past royal courts there were important signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior standing, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture creation, the chair holds a number of different models. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have perfected to suit to different human requirements. For its close association with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual areas of the chair are labeled likened to the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic role of your chair is to support our human body, its value is valued primarily for how fully it does measure up to this practical use. In the structure of a chair, the chair maker is bound under some static law and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made significant chair types, seen of the premier work in the arenas of handling and art. Out of those civilisations, particular mention must be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful craft, were seen from tomb discoveries. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was created. There was in our view no significant differentiation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The only change exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was created for an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that kind continued until much later points in time. But the stool then also was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still around but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be visible. These odd legs were presumed to have been manufactured in bent wood and were thus had to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were particularly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek design; quite a few statues of seated Romans show evidence of a denser and in appearance somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and works of art had been protected, detailing the insides and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing familiarity to images of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been found both with and without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one design, however, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, all three parts had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that just to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and were loose as a result) represent an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for the senior individuals, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite in several parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper products of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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